About all of these companies being interested, let's understand that it was Blackberry that sent letters of interest to these companies, not the other way around. We can't assume interest on any of their parts, even if they've replied with questions.

I suspect the Feds will be a little concerned that Chinese could influence Lenovo to put a backdoor on the BBM traffic allowing them to listen to Obama and other government workers. God help us if they don't care, then disfunction will have reached new heights.IBM shedding their PC hardware business to Lenovo has no potential for that kind of mischief, completely different issue.

On the contrary, the federal government, and particularly the Dept. of Defense, has a huge stake on what would happen to all those BlackBerry enterprise servers that handle sensitive DoD information. Do you think for a minute that DoD is going to stand by and let BerryBerry turn ownership of those servers over to the Chinese? I don't think so! If If Canada doesn't block the deal, one imagines the U.S. won't stand idly by.

I wasn't aware of that particular aspect of Canadian law, but since BB is incorporated in Canada, Her Majesty's Canadian Government is going to be a major player in whatever is decided (other jurisdictions can bar the combined company from doing business in their respective territories, but only Canada can dissolve the company). I'm guessing that in the end Canada will block the deal, saving the U.S. and E.U. the trouble.

As InformationWeek Government readers were busy firming up their fiscal year 2015 budgets, we asked them to rate more than 30 IT initiatives in terms of importance and current leadership focus. No surprise, among more than 30 options, security is No. 1. After that, things get less predictable.